* Fighting for Mooncake -- A Special Activity in Mid-Autumn Festival *

Fighting for Mooncake is a traditional activity spent with relatives or close friends in Xiamen area in order to celebrate the Mid- Autumn Festival. In September 28, 2017，when freshmen striving for the military training programme, we organized fighting for mooncake event with the main topic on Synbio. The six dices were thrown altogether to reach the points, which means you could get the corresponding levels of gifts. During freshman military training period, we set up two levels, students need to answer two questions related to basic Biology correctly before they went to the final "Fighting" game.

Throughout the game, we advertised the iGEM to freshmen, and introduced our project this year. It was worth mentioning that we also collected solicited opinions from all the students about the feasibility of treatment by biological method for water pollution.

" Is it feasible to deal with water pollution by the biological method? "

We altogether received 270 feedbacks, with 57% female students and 43% male counterparts.

67% of participants showed positive attitudes towards bio-method, with the common sense that the effects caused by microorganisms are easier to handle than chemical hazarders. Besides, only 4% students thought two dealing ways were equal.

Those who agreed with biological methods mostly stood for their more environmentally friendly feature, with the percentage of 56%. The percentage of reasons concerning no chemical pollution and advanced technology were exactly the same (19%). However, 6% freshmen had other opinions when thinking of biological treatment issues.

In the disagreement group about the sewage treatment by biological methods, 56 percent of people thought it would cause serious ecological pollution, 42 percent of students thought there was no way can be easily controlled microorganism like machines, and finally 2 percent of people hold other views.

All in all, thanks for the opinions that we received, we could see big things through small ones, thus contributing to people's existence precisely and appropriately. And in the later development of both Biology Science and Synthetic Biology, they pointed out a bright way for all of us. People’s view matters importantly as well as science development itself.

* The First Synthetic Biology Debate in XMU *

We organized the First Synthetic Biology Debate in XMU in the October 21st. XMU the College of Humanities debating team (Negative side) as well as the College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering college debating team (Affirmative side) argued about if the disadvantages of artificial transformation of life to human development outweigh the advantages. As this event was faced to whole range of students, it greatly popularized synthetic biology to public sense.

During the opening statement, the first speaker of positive side said: "First of all, from the social benefit, application of genetic engineering in agriculture and medicine has greatly eased the problem of hunger and drug parts shortages. From the point of view of economic benefits, the new industry developed by genetic engineering will bring huge profits. According to incomplete statistics, in Europe and the United States, the number of genetic engineering drugs on the market have already risen to almost one hundred, there are about more than more than 300 kinds of drugs in clinical trials, about 2000 in research and development, forming a huge high-tech industry, producing immeasurable economic benefits. Consequently, human society's attitudes towards the unknow genetic engineering is prudent, and will not take an irresponsible attitude of ignoring the potential risks, therefore, many concerns should not become the main human society problems to stop gene level on the grounds. In summary, the artificial transformation of life to human development outweigh its disadvantages."

While the first debater of negative side claimed that: "The standard that we judge if the artificial transformation to human life development is valued is weather the artificial transformation of life could promote human health safety progress. Our debating will discuss the influences morally and security. Firstly, the artificial lifeform has high risks and uncertain income. Secondly, the transgenic technology will aggravate social inequities, which is more likely to have genetic discrimination among human beings. Finally, we would like to ask a question, as the same as other creatures living in the earth, who gave us the rights to change life structure liberally? Artificial transformation created "supernatural" life, or accelerated the process of natural evolution, did we respect our life? And the nature?"

Later, at the free debate stage, the positive side hold the point that transgenic technology can increase grain yield, can alleviate the current difficulties, and can benefit the society and the economy. Of course the risk cannot be denied, but all those side effects can be changed under laws and regulations. At the same time, the opposite side disagreed that it hasn't boosted crop yields widely. Besides, gene contamination has occurred and has not been resolved, and the risks of the environment and human body cannot be avoided in a short time.

Eventually, during the closing statement, both sides gave their conclusions about this debate. As we all know, there are still no accurate results according to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Some people think that they totally disobey the rule of nature and morals, while others may believe that GMOs will bring us a better life condition. What we could do is to take the drawbacks to a controllable minimum.

* Laws and Models (environment VS GDP) *

I. Laws Investigation

The metal ions in the water will change the water pH value, resulting in deterioration of water living environment. While the pollution intensity exceeds self-regulating capacity, they will eventually lead to serious deteriorations due to positive feedback regulation. The heavy-metal pollutions with the characteristics of bioaccumulation, transformation process complexities as well as difficulties in forming insoluble complexes have arisen in Guangxi, Yichang, Gansu and other places among China recently.

Additionally, China plays an increasing role in in the water pollution remediation work, within domestic and international. Consequently, a series of measures for preventing and controlling industrial pollution such as "Water Pollution Prevention Action Plan" and "Water Pollution Map" have gradually been perfected.

At the same time, we made clear requirements of the detection limits of various pollutants (See below). However, how to achieve a low cost and efficient detection of water quality is still a big challenge.

Detection Limits of Water (partly)

At present, the water heavy metal detection and processing method of the mainstream can be divided into physical, chemical and biological three categories, among which, the physical examination is mainly detected by different metal specific absorption spectra and emission spectra of qualitative and quantitative, and chemical detection method is the use of electrochemical method for determination of the dissolution potential quality and anode. However, due to the extremely low concentration of heavy metals in water, thus producing considerably weak signal, resulting in large errors. In addition, experimental requirements of physical and chemical determination are comparably high which means they cannot be applied to real-time detection in nature. Compared to these, biological detection had a lower threshold, with a variety of the corresponding signal forms, can completely overcome the harsh natural conditions of field testing. The disadvantages of the traditional physical and chemical methods generally have higher cost, narrow scope, second pollution possibility. Biological treatment utilizes microorganism adsorptions, plant enrichment means which can effectively reduce the toxicity of metal ions. In addition, with the use of synthetic biology tools, engineering bacteria can better fit for heavy metal processing requirements.

By contrast, the public still concern about the safety and ethics behind biological control, to a certain extent, prohibiting the wide development of biological technology in water treatment. In the aspect of the development of synthetic biology, all countries in the world have made clear GMO Safety and management regulations. See below.

Because there are many health determinant factors, including market goods and services, such as healthcare, investment time and environmental conditions, such as air pollution, environmental sanitation and water purity, Grossman put forward the model of human capital demand in 1972 healthy, healthy as a kind of capital goods for the first time, be regarded as different from other human capital "health capital". The model considers the demand for "good health" can be used to explain the supply and demand curves, and the optimal decision for health needs by wealth and survival time in the life cycle of constrained. in 1991, Grossman and Krueger first proposed the environmental Kuznets curve (referred to as EKC), to describe the relationship between economic growth and environment are analyzed, their environment and economic growth in many countries the data shows that this the relationship between emissions and economic growth of some environmental pollutants in some countries of the present an inverted U-shaped curve relationship, which is in the initial stage of economic development, economic growth will cause great damage to the environment quality, but when the per capita GDP more than a "inflection point", the economic sustainable growth will in turn promote the improvement of environmental quality.

This year, XMU-China made a plan to investigate the relationship between environmental pollutants and economic, and finally chose the Grossman model to explore the relationship and the amount of GDP emission environment. According to the Grossman model (the classical economics on health demand model), which was divided into three kinds of emissions of pollutants and GDP effect, which were the scale effect, structure effect and the impact of technological progress effect respectively. Fujian province (China) was selected which maintain 12 major rivers in the province's 143 water quality evaluation. In the 143 sections of the overall water quality evaluation section, only 3 of them did not meet the water quality standard. The main items exceeding the standard was ammonia nitrogen, total phosphorus, COD, BOD five dissolved oxygen, all the statistics were from the data source for the 2016 statistical yearbook of Fujian Province, between 1996 to 2009.

Due to the industrial solid waste and industrial smoke and per capita GDP regression failed to pass the test, therefore, the EKC test lists four other pollution emissions and per capita GDP on the table. There is no Kuznets inverted "U" curve relationshipamong per capita emissions of dust, per capita wastewater discharge and sulfur dioxide emissions per capita per capita GDP. And per capita industrial emissions and per capita GDP shows no Kuznets inverted "U" curve as well. Unlike the inverted U-shaped curve of developed countries and emerging countries in general, Fujian's environmental Kuznets curves are two positive type u or ∽ type. The Fujian pollutant emissions in 1990s were relatively slow, and growing significantly fast from 2000, at which time the overall pollutions in Fujian were at a high level. In recent years, with the industrial wastewater and industrial dust effectively governance, Fujian comprehensive environmental pollution level of growth trend to be well controlled.

* SynBio UNO *

This year, XMU iGEMers have caught a wonderful idea while we were having brain storms. Why didn't we combine a public leisure activity which was considerably popular and play-centered with Synthetic Biology? Everyone, even totally has no background of Biology, could get involved and finally have basic knowledge about the state-of-art technology. Then, we chose UNO, which, as we all know, is a worldwide famous card game for the entertainment purpose. There are nine steps in regular Synthetic Biology experiment process, which are Transformation, Growing the Single Colonies from Agar Plates, Plasmid Extraction, Restriction Digest, DNA Gel Electrophoresis, Gel Extraction, Ligation, PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) and Making Glycerol Stocks, replacing the original number from 1 to 9 respectively. SynBio UNO rule is shown below.

I. UNO

2 to 10 Players.
Please remove all components from package and compare them to the component list.

III. INSTRUCTIONS

The first player to play all of the cards in his/her hand in each round score points for the cards their opponents are left holding. The first player to score 500 points wins the game.

SET UP

1. Each player draws a card. Player with the highest point value is the dealer.
2. Shuffle the deck.
3. Each player is dealt 7 cards.

Place the remaining cards facedown to form a DRAW pile. Turn over the top card of the DRAW pile to begin a DISCARD pile. If the top card is a Wild or Wild Draw4, return it on the deck and pick another card. For all other cards, see directions that follow.

ACTION CARDS

Draw 2 Card (20 points): When you play this card, the next person to play must draw 2 cards and forfeit his/her turn. If this card is turned up at the beginning of play, the first player must draw two cards. This card may only be played on a matching color or on another Draw 2 card.

Reverse Card(20 points): This card reverses direction of play. Play to the left now passes to the right, and vice versa. If this card is turned up at the beginning of play, the player to the right now plays first, and play then goes to the right instead of left. This card may only be played on a matching color or on another Reverse card.

Skip Card(20 points): The next person in line to play after this card is played loses his/her turn and is "skipped". If this card is turned up at the beginning of play, the first player (the player to the left of the dealer) is skipped. This card may only be played on a matching color or on another Skip card.

Wild Card(50 points): When you play this card, you may change the color being played to any color (including the current color)to continue play. You may play a Wild card even if you have another playable card in hand. If this card is turned up at the beginning of play, the person to the left of the dealer chooses the color to play and plays the first card.

Wild Draw 4 Card(50 points): This card allows you to call the next color played and requires the next player to pick 4 cards from the DRAW pile and foreit his/her turn. However, there is a hitch! You can only play this card when you don't have a card in your hand that matches the color of the card previously played. If turned up at the beginning of play, return this card to the deck and pick another card. Note: a play may play a "Wild Draw4"card even if they have a matching number or action card of a different color in their hand. If you suspect that a player has played a Wild Draw4 card illegally, you may challenge them. A challenged player must show his/her hand to the player who challenged. If the challenged player is not guilty, the challenger must draw the 4 cards, plus 2 additional cards, only the person required to draw the 4 cards can make.

LET'S PLAY

1. Player to the left of the dealer plays first. Play passes to the left to start.

2. Match the top card on the DISCARD pile either by experiment process, color or action. For example, if the card is a Green “Plasmid extraction”, you must play a Green card of any color “Plasmid extraction”, or you may play any Wild card or a Wild Draw 4 card.

3. If you don't have anything that matches, you must pick a card from the DRAW pile. If you draw a playable card you can play it. Otherwise, play moves to the next person.

4. Before playing your next last card, you must say "UNO". If you don't say UNO and another player catches you with just one card before the next player begins their turn you must pick two more cards from the DRAW pile. If you are not caught before the next player either draws a card from the DRAW pile or draws a card from his/her hand to play. you do not have to draw the extra cards.

5. Once a player plays his/her last card, the hand is over. Points are tallied and you start over again.